Esalen was founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962. Their goal was to explore work in the humanities and sciences in order to fully realize what Aldous Huxley had called the "human potentialities".[4] Through the years, Esalen became the center of practices and beliefs that make up the New Age movement, from Eastern spirituality, alternative and mind-body therapies, to Gestalt Practice.[5]

The grounds of the Esalen Institute were once home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, from whom the institute gets its name.[8]Carbon dating tests of artifacts found on Esalen's property have indicated a human presence as early as 2600 BCE.[9] Given access to the ocean, fresh water and hot springs, the Esselen people used the site regularly, with certain areas reserved for burial grounds. The Esselen population was largely decimated by diseases contracted at the Carmel Mission, where measles, smallpox, and syphilis wiped out 90 percent of the native population.[10] Today, a few people in the area can still trace their ancestry to the Esselen, and they maintain a relationship with Esalen Institute.[11]

Slates Hot Springs aerial view

In the 1870s, Thomas Slate visited the Big Sur site to use the hot springs because he suffered from severe arthritis. He homesteaded the property in the early 1880s,[12] and a settlement began known as Slates Hot Springs. This site became the first tourist-oriented business in Big Sur, frequented by others who sought relief from similar afflictions. In 1910, the land was purchased by Henry Murphy,[12] a Salinas, California, physician (who delivered John Steinbeck). Murphy bought the property with the intention of opening a European-style health spa, when the yet-to-be-built Highway 1 was completed.[13] While the highway was being built, the Slate's Hot Springs site was used by engineers and others involved with the construction. The highway was opened in 1937[12] and then closed to the public with the outbreak of World War II. After Highway 1 reopened, the Murphy family employed a series of property managers. There was a restaurant and the hot springs baths were opened to paid use.[14]

After they met, Murphy and Price found much in common. In 1961, they traveled down to the Murphy family's Big Sur property.[21] The two began drawing up plans for a forum that would be open to ways of thinking beyond the constraints of mainstream academia, while avoiding the dogmatism so often seen in groups organized around a single idea promoted by a charismatic leader. So they envisioned offering a wide range of philosophies, religious disciplines and psychological techniques.[22] Henry Murphy's widow, and Michael's grandmother, Vinnie, previously had refused to lease the property, even turning down an earlier request from Michael. However, she agreed to a lease this time,[23] and granted free use of the property. The lease was combined with capital that Price had accumulated (his father was a vice-president at Sears).[24] They were given networking support by Spiegelberg, Watts, Huxley and his wife Laura, as well as by Gerald Heard and Gregory Bateson. The concept of Esalen was partially modeled upon Trabuco College, founded by Heard as a quasi-monastic experiment in the mountains East of Irvine, California, and later donated to the Vedanta Society.[25]

Alan Watts gave the first lecture at Esalen in January 1962.[26]Gia-fu Feng joined Price and Murphy,[27] along with Bob Breckenridge, Bob Nash, Alice and Jim Sellers, as the first Esalen staff members.[23] In the middle of that same year Abraham Maslow, the prominent humanistic psychologist, just happened to drive into the grounds and soon became an important figure at the institute.[28] By autumn a catalog was issued advertising workshops with such titles as "Individual and Cultural Definitions of Rationality", "The Expanding Vision" and "Drug-Induced Mysticism".[26] In 1964, Fritz Perls began a long-term residency at Esalen and became a lasting influence. Perls offered many Gestalt therapy seminars at the institute, until he left in July 1969.[29] Perls and Jim Simkin led Gestalt training courses at Esalen. When Perls left Esalen in 1969 he considered it to be in crisis again. He saw young people without any training leading encounter groups. And he feared that charlatans would take the lead.[30]

Dick Price became one of Perls' closest students. Price developed his own form of practice called Gestalt Practice,[31] which he continued teaching at Esalen until his death in a hiking accident in 1985.[19] Michael Murphy became an author, writing non-fiction books about Esalen related topics, as well as several novels.

Esalen gained popularity quickly and started to regularly publish catalogs full of programs. The facility was large enough to run multiple programs simultaneously, so Esalen started creating numerous resident teacher positions..[32] Murphy recruited Will Schutz, the well-known encounter group leader, to take up permanent residence at Esalen.[33] All this combined to firmly position Esalen in the nexus of the counterculture of the 1960s.

Esalen was incorporated as a non-profit institution in 1963.[34] Increased attention came to the institute in 1966 when Esalen started to receive coverage in the news media. George Leonard published an article in Look magazine about the California scene, that mentioned Esalen and included a picture of Murphy.[35]Time magazine published an article about Esalen in September 1967.[36]The New York Times Magazine published an article by Leo E. Litwak in late December.[37] Then an article about Esalen appeared in Life magazine.[38] These articles brought Esalen into the awareness of other media outlets, not just in the U.S. but also overseas. Esalen responded by holding large-scale conferences in Midwestern and East Coast cities,[39] as well as in Europe. Esalen opened a satellite center in San Francisco that offered extensive programming until it closed in the mid-1970s for financial reasons.[40]

Esalen has always been forced to change as it responded to internal and external stressors.[41][42][43][44][45][46][47] Dick Price provided leadership at the institute, and his death in late 1985 brought about many changes in personnel and programming.[48] Steven Donovan became president of the institute,[49] and Brian Lyke served as general manager.[50] Nancy Lunney[51] became the director of programming,[52] and David Price (Dick's son) served as general manager of Esalen beginning in the mid-1990s.[53] The baths were destroyed in 1998 by severe weather and were rebuilt at great expense, but this caused severe institutional stress.[54] Afterward, Andy Nusbaum developed an economic plan to stabilize Esalen's finances.[55] Ultimately, under the direction of Gordon Wheeler,[56] management was dramatically restructured.[57] However, this resulted in the voluntary withdrawal of Christine Stewart Price (Dick's wife) from the institute, in order to preserve Dick Price's legacy at a new teaching facility.[58][59]

In the early days, many of the seminars[60] challenged the status quo — such as "The Value of Psychotic Experience". There were even Esalen programs that questioned the movement of which Esalen itself was a part — for instance, "Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness To Submit". And there was a series of encounter groups focused on racial prejudice.[61]

Rather than merely lecturing, many leaders began to experiment with what Huxley called the non-verbal humanities: the education of the body, the senses, and the emotions. The intention of this work was to suggest a new ethic — to develop awareness of one's present flow of experience, to express this fully and accurately, and to listen to feedback. These "experiential" workshops were particularly well attended and did much to shape Esalen's future course.[62]

In 1964, Joan Baez led a workshop entitled "The New Folk Music"[70] which included a free performance. This was the first of seven "Big Sur Folk Festivals" featuring many of the era's music legends. The 1969 concert included musicians who had just come from the Woodstock Festival. This event was featured in a documentary movie, Celebration at Big Sur, which was released in 1971.

In 1994, President and CEO Sharon Thom[71] created an Artist-in-Residence program to provide artists with a two-week retreat in which to focus upon works in progress. These artists interacted with the staff, offered informal gatherings, and staged performances on the newly created dance platform. Located next to the Art Barn, the dance platform was used by Esalen teachers for dance and martial arts. Later, the platform was covered by a dome, and renamed the Leonard Pavilion after deceased Esalen past president and board member, George Leonard.

In 1995 and 1996, Esalen hosted two Arts Festivals, which gathered together artists, poets, musicians, photographers and performers, including artist Margot McLean, psychologist James Hillman, guitarist Michael Hedges and Joan Baez. All staff members were allowed to attend every class and performance that did not interfere with their schedules. Arts festivals have since become a popular yearly event at Esalen.[72]

Esalen has been the subject of loose interpretations in art, entertainment, and media.

In the comedy-drama Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), sophisticated Los Angeles residents Bob and Carol Sanders (played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) spend a weekend of emotional honesty at an Esalen-style retreat,[73] after which they return to their life determined to embrace free love and complete openness.

Esalen features prominently in Edward St Aubyn's comic novel On the Edge (1998).

A BBC television series, The Century of the Self (2002), was critical of the Human Potentials Movement and included video segments recorded at Esalen.[74]

The Mad Men finale, "Person to Person" (which aired on May 17, 2015), featured Don and Stephanie staying at an Esalen-like coastline retreat in the year 1970.[75]

Esalen Institute has sponsored many research initiatives, educational projects, and invitational conferences. The Big Sur facility has been used for these events, as well as other locations, including international sites.

Encouraged by Dick Price, the Schizophrenia Research Project was conducted over a three-year period at Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, California, involving 80 young males diagnosed with schizophrenia.[76] Funded in part by Esalen Institute, this program was co-sponsored by the California Department of Mental Hygiene (reorganized: CMHSA) and the National Institute of Mental Health. It explored the thesis that the health of certain patients would permanently improve if their psychotic process was not interrupted by administration of antipsychoticpharmaceutical drugs.[77] Julian Silverman was chief of research for the project. He also served as Esalen's general manager in the 1970s.[78] The Agnews double blind study was the largest first-episode psychosis research project ever conducted in the United States. It demonstrated that the young men given a placebo had a 75 percent lower re-hospitalization rate and much better outcomes than the men who received anti-psychotic medication. These results were used as justification for medication-free programs in the San Francisco Bay Area.[79] Michael Cornwall, who worked in one of the Agnews-inspired projects, has revived the Alternative Views and Approaches to Psychosis Initiative at Esalen by convening an invitational conference of leaders in the field of psychosis treatment, under the auspices of the Esalen Center for Theory and Research.[80]

Starting in 1969, in association with Viking Press, the institute published a series of 17 books about Esalen-related topics, including the first edition of Michael Murphy's novel, Golf in the Kingdom (1971).[81] Some of these books remain in print.

In the mid-1980s, Esalen entered into a joint publishing arrangement with Lindisfarne Press to publish a small library of Russian philosophical and theological books.[82]

In 1980, Esalen began the Soviet-American Exchange Program (later renamed: Track Two, an institute for citizen diplomacy).[83] This initiative came at a time when Cold War tensions were at their peak. The program was credited with substantial success in fostering peaceful private exchanges between citizens of the "super powers".[84] In the 1980s, Michael Murphy and his wife Dulce were instrumental in organizing the program with Soviet citizen Joseph Goldin, in order to provide a vehicle for citizen-to-citizen relations between Russians and Americans. In 1982, Esalen and Goldin pioneered the first U.S.–Soviet Space Bridge, allowing Soviet and American citizens to speak directly with one another via satellite communication. In 1988, Esalen brought Abel Aganbegyan, one of Mikhail Gorbachev's chief economic advisors to the United States. In 1989, Esalen brought Boris Yeltsin on his first trip to the United States, although Yeltsin did not visit the Esalen facility in Big Sur. Esalen arranged meetings for Mr. Yeltsin with then President George H. W. Bush, and many other leaders in business and government. Two former presidents of the exchange program included Jim Garrison and Jim Hickman. After Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down, and effectively dissolved the Soviet Union, Garrison helped establish The State of the World Forum, with Gorbachev as its convening chairman. These successes led to other Esalen citizen diplomacy programs, including exchanges with China, an initiative to further understanding among Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as further work on Russian-American relations.[85]

In 1998, Esalen launched the Center for Theory and Research (CTR) to initiate new areas of practice and action, which foster social change and realization of the human potential.[86] The CTR is the research and development arm of Esalen Institute.[87]

Bodywork has always been a significant part of the Esalen experience. In the late 1990s, the "EMBA" was organized as a semi-autonomous Esalen association for the regulation of Esalen massage practitioners.[88]

Esalen has been cited in the press as having played a key role in the cultural transformations of the 1960s[89] Esalen has also been the subject of some criticism and controversy.[90] After reporting the professed mission statement of the institute, The Economist summarized the critics as follows: “For many others in America and around the world, Esalen stands more vaguely for that metaphorical point where ‘East meets West’ and is transformed into something uniquely and mystically American or New Agey. And for a great many others yet, Esalen is simply that notorious bagno-bordello where people had sex and got high throughout the 1960s and 1970s before coming home talking psychobabble and dangling crystals.”[5] Other criticism may be found in publications cited in the footnotes.[91][92][93]

The Human Potential Movement was criticized for espousing an ethic that the inner-self should be freely expressed in order to reach one's true potential. Some people saw this ethic as an aspect of Esalen's culture. The historian Christopher Lasch claimed that humanistic techniques encourage narcissistic, spiritual materialistic or self-obsessive thoughts and behaviors.[94] In 1990 a graffiti artist spray painted "Jive shit for rich white folk" on the entrance to Esalen,[95] highlighting class and race issues. Some thought that this was a regression of progress away from true spiritual growth.[96]

Because of Esalen's isolated location, its operational staff members have been residential from the beginning and collectively they have shaped the character of the institute.[96] The community has been steeped in a form of Gestalt that pervades all aspects of daily life, including meeting structures, workplace practices, and individual language styles.[97] In 1966, the institute began year-long residential educational programs which were subsequently replaced by month-long work-study programs and year-long work-oriented extended student programs.[98] There is a preschool on site called the Gazebo, serving the children of staff, some program participants, and affiliated local residents.[99]

^Documentation provided by Steven Harper of radiocarbon dating, performed by members of the Sonoma State University Cultural Resources Faculty, that produced the following results: 4,630 +/- 100 years BP (before present). Harper notes confirmation by similar tests from Big Creek (4-5 miles south of Esalen Institute), which produced: 6,400 years BP, as cited in The Prehistory of Big Creek by Terry Jones (2000).

^ abThe Only Way Out Is In: The Life Of Richard Price by Barclay James Erickson, in Kripal, Jeffrey and Glenn W. Shuck, ed. On The Edge Of The Future: Esalen And The Evolution Of American Culture. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21759-8.(2005)

^The Only Way Out Is In: The Life Of Richard Price by Barclay James Erickson, in Kripal, Jeffrey and Glenn W. Shuck (editors), On The Edge Of The Future: Esalen And The Evolution Of American Culture, Indiana University Press (2005) p.148

^Nancy's name changed to Nancy Lunney Wheeler upon marriage to Gordon Wheeler who later became Esalen CEO; see, Goldman, Marion S. The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege. New York University Press. (2012) p. 67